Welcome to my newsletter! You’re receiving this email because you signed up online or at an event (IDS Vancouver or Artist Project Toronto), or you requested updates from me about my work. Some of you (long-time friends, relatives, friends of the family) are protesting, “I didn’t sign up for this!”…I’m sorry, I added you to my mailing list with flagrant disregard for spam laws. If you prefer to receive updates elsewhere, or not at all, you can unsubscribe at any time - no hard feelings!

Otherwise read on for news about upcoming exhibitions, project updates, and where I’m off to next!

I guess this means I’m a National Geographic Photographer now!

The Alfresco Science Machine and I have travelled a long way since I first started this project in 2017; 5 provinces, 1 territory, from the west coast to the east coast of Canada, through rainforest, boreal forest, and Carolinian swamp forest. From the ocean, to the mountains, and across the prairies. And now in January 2024 onto the pages of National Geographic Magazine. To say I’m thrilled would be quite an understatement.

It’s such an honour to have my work published among so many incredibly talented photographers, to find myself in the company of those who dedicate their careers to sharing the incredible wonders of the natural world with readers around the globe, and the importance of doing everything we can to take care of all the living things that we share this planet with.

Turns out other people were also really excited about my achievement and wanted to hear more about it, so you can listen to and watch some interviews I did right here: CBC Radio 1 The Calgary Eyeopener (also rebroadcast nationally on The Story From Here starts at the 10:00 mark), on CTV News Calgary, and on CTV News Network Top 3 Tonight (starts at 38:50 mark).

Just a note that Nat Geo is no longer on newstands as of 2024, but you can order individual copies here and subscribers to the digital edition, or Apple News+ can view the article online. Your local library may have copies too!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I’m very grateful to have received funding from Calgary Arts Development, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Canada Council for the Arts at various stages of the project which has allowed me to travel to so many extraordinary places and pursue this work to my heart’s content.

Upcoming exhibition: Aurora Arborealis at Christine Klassen Gallery, Calgary, Feb 3 - Mar 2, 2024, (and a big SMALL announcement)

If you are in the Calgary area in February, please come by Christine Klassen Gallery to visit my solo exhibition featuring new work from my summer 2023 artist residency in Terra Nova National Park, Newfoundland. You can feast your eyes on some new Ghost Pipe images, meet the Rose Hooktip moth, check out the hairiest berries (that look and taste like tictacs), and of course see a whole bunch of new-to-me mushroom specimens. If you can make it down to the opening on Feb 3, 1-4, I’ll be giving an artist talk at 2pm, and I’ll tell you all about the adventures I had between dreaming up and actually creating my favourite image of the bunch, Kalmia angustifolia.

I’m also very happy to share that for the first time, after fielding many many requests over the years from desperate fans suffering from Acute Wallspace Deficiency Syndrome, I will be offering a limited run of small prints! 10 works from this Newfoundland series will be available as 18”x13”s (a few are taller), in an edition of 8. These works will still be available in my usual two large-scale sizes in an edition of 15. All the details about this special release are right here!

Upcoming show and artist residency: ‘The Memory Palace’ at Sparrow Artspace, Calgary

As part of the Exposure Photography Festival I’m part of a duo exhibition and month-long artist residency with my talented friend Stephanie Jager. We will be spending the month of February using alternative photo processes like cyanotype, polaroid transfer and encaustic to make work exploring memory.

When I was in Iceland in the spring, I started some experiments using old book paper as the substrate for the project I’ll be working on, and am really excited to finally complete this series of text and photo works based on my sister’s poem The Winter Garden. The residency space has a beautiful bay window, like a shop front, so I plan to attempt to sprout some seeds there to incorporate into the work.

We’ll be having open hours at Sparrow Thursdays through Saturdays in February from 11-6, so feel free to swing by for a visit.

We’ll also be hosting a cyanotype workshop on February 10th, all the details and a link for tickets are on the Sparrow website.

The closing party for our exhibition, which we’ll be gradually installing over the month as we create the work, will take place on February 23rd from 5-9, please come by and say hello!

Commissioned work: The Underwing Speakeasy, Cambridge ON

This June I spent a week in Cambridge, ON working on essentially my dream job: travel to a location, spend a ton of time wandering around in nature, forage for the perfect local plant specimens. Even cooler was that since I don’t collect live animals (any shells or insects you see in my work were found, ahem, ‘pre-deceased’), I got to spend a day at the University of Guelph, scanning Underwing moth specimens from their insect collection to incorporate into the final pieces, which are some of my biggest ever at 74” tall by 44” wide. You can see a few snapshots I took while working with the collection below. In the tray of moths, there’s a collection label belonging to one of the moths I scanned, indicating it had been collected in 1896! It’s hard to imagine how different the world looked for that moth compared to it’s contemporary descendants. I love that I was able to take these venerable specimens and bring them back out into the world, and am so grateful for the generosity and trust of the collection curators in allowing me to access these specimens. As tends to happen with most of my work, I got to learn about some new species. The Underwing (speakeasy) took its inspiration from Underwing (moths). Mostly appearing in well-camouflaged variations of browns and greys when at rest, these native species reveal an eye-catching, boldly striped, and often brightly coloured underwing when in flight - the perfect inspiration for a chic underground bar.

Most of the collecting that I did was on site in Cambridge at the rare Charitable Research Reserve who jumped on board and gave me a collections permit on short notice. I spent days wandering many of their beautifully maintained trails, and was able to gather quite a range of specimens.

The Underwing has purchased 1/15 of each of these 4 works, but if you are interested in acquiring one of these prints, the remaining 14 in the edition are all available! I also have several other images in this series that haven’t been released yet, so keep an eye out (or feel free to reach out for a sneak peek if this series really resonates with you).

Cambridge Today featured this project in an article, you can read it here.

Terra Nova National Park Artist Residency

I could write a whole separate newsletter about this experience, but will just share some highlights. I spent 5 weeks in my little cabin in the park, along with a quick trip over to Gros Morne National Park on the west side of the island. I think what I appreciated most about this residency was the amount of time I had - I didn’t feel rushed to collect any specimens or start making any work - I was able to really explore the environment and learn a lot about the ecosystems around me. This is reflected in the scanned pieces that I made there, which have a lot of complexity and depth, and really offer a meaningful portrait of the fascinating communities of organisms in the Boreal forest.

I had the great good fortune of having the incomparable Dave Saunders (officially the ‘Visitor Experience Product Development Officer’ for Terra Nova) as my parks liaison, whose background in art, teaching, interpretation, and being born and raised right next door in Glovertown meant that I had the best possible ambassador imaginable on speed-dial. Dave showed me around all the best spots in the park, taught me a ton of things about Terra Nova’s plants and animals, but also introduced me to the local (human) community. I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been to Newfoundland, but I was welcomed with open arms and got to attend a bunch of local events such as a tea at the Glovertown Lion’s Club featuring entertainment by none other than Buddy Wasisname and Dave Saunders (oh yes he’s a musician too), the Winterset in Summer Literary Festival where I saw Michael Crummey interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel, and the most beautiful youth talent concert hosted at Terra Nova’s Newman Sound Campground outdoor theatre at twilight on my last night in the park.

In addition to my usual scanned images, I was able to develop some new work during my stay. There are lots of group tours that pass through the park, and Dave will often hop on to provide an interpretive presentation to these buses as they stop at a few points of interest. He brought me along on one of these, introducing me as the artist in residence and a plant expert. I chimed in here and there at a couple stops with some plant facts, and at our last stop (a moose exclosure set up to demonstrate the huge impacts that invasive moose have on the NL forest) an elderly lady from the tour drew me aside and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think most people would rather see a moose than a plant”. This is quite true of most visitors to Newfoundland, it seems, where “have you seen any moose” is the greeting of choice on the trails as opposed to “hello”. The irony of course is that moose are an introduced species to NL and with no natural predators they’ve become a huge burden on the forest. In any case, my moose/plant pictures were born! I photographed all the moose warning signs I could find along the highways, and used these silhouettes as a template to create cutouts on white paper. Given that so many visitors are constantly scanning the landscape and assessing it through the lens of ‘does it or does it not contain a moose’, it seemed like a great way to photograph the charismatic microflora that I am interested in! This project did work some magic… when I took my cutouts out for the first time and spent the whole day photographing these, I was woken in the middle of the night by a moose in the front yard of my cabin!

A huge thank you to my residency co-hosts: The Rooms NL and Parks Canada, Terra Nova National Park, and to the Canada Council for funding support.

Deep Dark Forest Notecards and Journal from Chronicle Books are going strong!

My notecards and journal published by Chronicle Books in San Francisco came out this summer and I’ve been told that the first printing of both has SOLD OUT and they are now into a second run. A huge thank you to everyone who has supported me by buying these beauties as gifts for yourselves and for others. A wall calendar for 2025 will be coming out in the summer as well. These can all be ordered/pre-ordered online, from a variety of sources, but if you have a favourite indie bookstore or museum gift shop near you, you’ll likely find them there as well.

As always if you see them out in the wild, please send me a snapshot! I love to see these on shelves all over the world.

Activating the Alfresco Science Machine’s Early Warning System:

Please stay tuned for more details, but a heads-up that I’ll be returning to Artist Project in Toronto which takes place April 11-14! Then, beginning April 20th you will find my work as part of a really exciting group exhibition called In Our Nature at the Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre in Medicine Hat, curated by Xanthe Isbister. And last but not least I’ll be having a solo show at Riverdale Hub in Toronto as part of the Contact Photography Festival in May. More to come…

Thanks for reading! You can also follow along on instagram for updates, and find my work in person at Christine Klassen Gallery in Calgary, and Blu Dog Gallery in Oakville ON. See you in the forest!

-Julya